INICIAÇÃO CIENTÍFICA NAS ESCOLAS PÚBLICAS MUNICIPAIS DE ENSINO FUNDAMENTAL: LIMITES E POSSIBILIDADES

Abstract

An essential question has always been the subject of discussion between theorists, society and educators: What would be the ideal methodology for developing students in a comprehensive way, effectively preparing them for the increasingly competitive real world? The way of learning, in schools, went through several methodological orientations, from the traditional to the New School, emphasizing that all these actions aimed to offer the student a pleasant learning. In the last decades, the learning through the Scientific Initiation, supported in an interdisciplinary learning. Despite the constant renewal in the school environment, there is still a low rate of scientific production in Latin America and Brazil. According to some theorists, this reality would be directly related to the form of learning practiced in elementary schools, pointing to the understanding that while in developed countries the students research, in Latin America they study, resulting in an unproductive learning. In view of this scenario, this research seeks to investigate how the insertion of scientific initiation in municipal public elementary schools in the municipality of Imperatriz-MA is being developed. To do this, it was necessary to carry out a survey in the specialized literature on the advances of scientific initiation and elementary education, to identify the main investment policies in science and technology for elementary education in Brazil, to map municipal investment policies in Science and technology for elementary education and to check with the eighty teachers from seven selected schools the limits and possibilities of the insertion of scientific initiation in public elementary schools in the municipality of Imperatriz / MA. In order to perform the data collection in the seven selected schools, a semi-structured questionnaire was used and, for the analysis of the data, the Analysis, Thematic of Content (BARDIN, 2011) technique was used. The research results highlight that among the main limiters found are: the lack of continuous training, the lack of interest on the part of some students and the lack of knowledge of the educators in relation to the incentive programs for initiation to research in basic education. Regarding the possibilities, it is important to emphasize the educators' understanding of the importance of scientific initiation with the intellectual and moral formation of its protagonists, as well as the involvement of the people who make up the school environment.